Nadia Ghulam says that those born in countries at war do not have a name or surname or age. This is precisely her case, born in 1985 in a Afghanistan already occupied by Russia. Without records, the Afghan writer and activist knows that she was born in Kabul and decided to set an approximate date. June 4. He just turned 37 years old. This woman, who drills with her gaze, lived ten years posing as a man in Afghanistan when a bomb killed her brother and left her in a coma for several months in the middle of the civil war. She has been in Catalonia for 16. release book –-Dreaming of peace— and provides some reflections that are like darts.
-What differences do you detect between this last stage of the Taliban regime and the one you experienced?
-In my book dreaming of peace I draw many parallels between today and what happened during the Taliban regime that I lived through, the one that began in 1996. The Taliban at that time lived in a century in which we had just had a civil war and they did not have access to information such as the we know now. Now, they have experienced a very important change at the technology level. everyone has a smartphone Even if they don’t know how to write their name. They have cameras and they know how to send photos and videos. This is a serious problem for the civilian population. People who have tasted a bit of freedom are back in a cage and it is costing them dearly. The change is very big. They are oppressors with more experience and more tools. Everything is taxed and people are afraid. Before, the Taliban punished women who left the house alone or uncovered. Now the system is more perverse. The Taliban do not punish women directly but the men in her family, which greatly increases violence within the home.
-Do you think that Spain gives the same treatment to Ukrainian refugees as to Afghans or other nationalities?
-There is a very big grievance. Now, for example, the refugees from Ukraine who arrive in Spain have many economic resources. The poor Ukrainian refugees have not yet arrived. In addition to having their own resources, they have an easier time entering the university and following their path, validating their degrees and working at what they used to work for. What about Afghans and Syrians or Palestinians? Why are there first-class and second-class refugees? I speak of Afghanistan because it is what I know. In Afghanistan we have been suffering from war for 50 years. 50 years without education… The mental health of Afghan refugees is not good. 95% of us suffer from very serious post-traumatic stress. We arrived with the hope that human rights are guaranteed here, that life can be continued with dignity, but we find that to study you have to validate your studies, to work, provide all the certificates. And to do that you need years of processing and going from office to office and you can’t because you have to eat and, in the end, you take some cleaning job to survive. They will continue to live, but with indignation, because they will always live badly. Is it really an opportunity?
– Is it necessary to streamline the processes of validation of studies for refugees?
-I don’t want them to give us the certificates. I ask, please, that they see our capabilities, open the doors of the universities and let us study the careers that we want.
-What has happened to your sister in this regard?
-My sister is a math teacher in Afghanistan but now she can’t prove it here. She has been offered a cleaning course. And it is very sad for me because I have sacrificed my life here, euro for euro, to pay for my sister’s studies, so that she has a slightly better life than mine. I have been illiterate until I was 16 years old and I did not want the same thing to happen to my sister.
-I see that you are outraged to see how the West supplies weapons to Ukraine as a solution to the Russian attack.
-Unfortunately, we humans are not learning from our mistakes. They are using the same method that they used in my country. I was born in Russian-occupied Afghanistan. And what the US and Europe did was give weapons to civilians to fight against the Russians. They managed to get the Russians out but they caused 50 years of war in my country, which has not been solved yet. It’s the same thing they’re doing in the Ukraine. It is as if you armed an ant that can defend itself against an elephant. Weapons are never the solution. No violence eliminates violence.
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-Do you regret the media treatment of the crisis?
-Yes. Now the fashion is Ukraine, nobody remembers Afghanistan anymore. It hurts because if we stop appearing in the media, humanitarian aid does not arrive either and you go on to join the list of countries and forgotten crises. I wouldn’t want Afghanistan to end like this. The consequences are paid by the most vulnerable people on the planet.